Superficial Intelligence: Posting Photos

Thank you for your question.

In the hellish bygone era of analog media, the hassle of taking, developing, and disseminating photographs meant the average person only ever bothered to chronicle the most significant moments in their life. Today, we have the power to take hundreds of perfect photos each month and share them instantly.

In fact, if you do not, people will be concerned.

Social media is the bottomless photo receptacle where you must prove that you are alive—and doing very well—by posting images of yourself skiing, attending youth soccer games, cooking in your kitchen, eating in your dining room, putting your kids on the bus, flying on a plane, drinking a colorful cocktail, walking your dog, swimming with your kids in a pool, working out, standing at the base of the Eiffel Tower, and sitting in traffic.

Each time people see such photos, they will recognize that you have a fantastic life and are therefore a fantastic person. When your name comes up in conversation, they will think of you this way.

Will images of your wonderful life make them feel jealous or even inferior? Yes, but you are not responsible for their feelings of inadequacy, just as you are not responsible for your own feelings of deep satisfaction for having elicited them.

The only thing you should ever be worried about is not posting enough photos.

How many is enough? Say you’re talking to an acquaintance at a party. If you need to actually tell them you recently went to the science museum with your kids because they did not already see an Instagram post of this, then you definitely need to up your numbers.

Ideally you will post so many photos that people will have no reason to ask you anything about yourself, ever.

Now, when it comes to posting all of these photos of you and your family, you might have reservations about constantly invading your child’s privacy without their consent. How will they feel about all of your posts that featured them once they’ve grown older? Mortified? Violated? Probably both.

But what is that when compared to several “likes” from your mother’s bored former coworker?

Yes, it’s possible that sharing all of their private moments could breed such insecurity, resentment, and mistrust with you that it irreparably harms your child-parent relationship. But guess what? You don’t have to post the photos of that part.

In the best case scenario, your kid might even be discovered as a potential brand ambassador for the toothpaste in your photo of them brushing their teeth. That’s something any good parent could support and maybe even doggedly seek out. Such a windfall could easily cover whatever family therapy might be required down the line.

Even if Crest toothpaste doesn’t want them, tech companies do. Or at least they want whatever data they can quietly scrape from every image of them. Who knows what cool AI-generated images your children will be used to generate! You’ll probably never need to worry about it, since they’ll be posted on some random forum on the other side of the internet galaxy.

Theoretically, could someone use you or your family member’s photos to pretend to be you online, or blackmail you with embarrassing AI-generated images? Yes. But why would someone do such a thing to you? Your life is fantastic, as your photos will confirm, and such things don’t happen in fantastic people’s lives.

Lastly, we should address the elephant in the room: Are you concerned about predators online? Well…actually, I don’t have a tongue-in-cheek rebuttal to that. You should absolutely be concerned about that. If you’re not at all worried, then there is probably a lucrative job waiting for you as Head of Safety at Meta.

We live in an age where it is impossible to overshare. There can never be too much online, for the internet has an insatiable appetite for our digital morsels. I say post away with reckless abandon and let the chips fall where they may. Just be sure to update us all with a dozen photos when they do.

Illustration by Tammy Lian